In an increasingly interconnected and technology-dependent world, Cloud is proving to be an essential element for digital innovation and business transformation. Aware of this reality, the European Commission is taking action to promote and develop the use of Cloud and Edge Computing within the European Union. The Commission’s Directorate‑General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology is responsible for EU policy on the single digital market, network security, digital science and innovation, and sustainable and inclusive growth in Europe.
Tomas Petru’s speech at CLOUD DAYS 2023, the event by 3DS OUTSCALE held on June 13, highlighted the most significant actions undertaken by the European Commission in this field, as well as the DOME project, an ambitious initiative aiming to create a unique European marketplace for Cloud and Edge services.
The European Commission’s initiatives for Cloud and Edge Computing
Representative of the European Commission’s DG CNECT, and more specifically of the Cloud Software Policy Unit, Tomas Petru shared the major Cloud and Edge Computing projects with the visitors of CLOUD DAYS 2023.
“Europe’s digital strategy is currently guided by the Digital Decade Policy Program. The program itself pursues two key targets to be achieved by the year 2030 in the area of Cloud and Edge technology. For Cloud, the goal is to increase the adoption of advanced Cloud services by European businesses up to 75% as compared to the current 40 or 41%. For Edge computing, it’s the deployment of 10,000 highly energy-efficient Edge nodes.”
Among the various means of achieving these goals, there are three main types of action currently implemented by the European Commission:
Regulatory: These include ongoing negotiations on the Data Act, the EUCS (European Union Cybersecurity Strategy), and the “EU Cloud Rulebook”. These efforts aim to create a regulatory framework to guide and secure the development and use of Cloud services in Europe.
Organizational: Tomas Petru mentioned in particular the European Alliance for Industrial Data, Edge and Cloud, of which OUTSCALE is a member and where we play an active role.
Funding: The European Commission funds various programs to support Cloud and Edge research and deployment. These include the Horizon Europe program for research, the Connecting Europe Facility – Digital program for digital infrastructure, and the Digital Europe Program for the deployment of digital services. In 2021, for example, a 20 million euro grant has been awarded to a consortium of 38 participants, including OUTSCALE, to support the creation of a European Cloud marketplace (the DOME project).
“OUTSCALE is very well positioned to contribute, as a partner, as a consortium member to a successful delivery of DOME. And for that reason, we at the European Commission are also very happy to have OUTSCALE on board,” Tomas Petru
DOME, the European Cloud marketplace project
The DOME project aims at reducing Europe’s dependence on foreign Cloud service providers by promoting the development of a sovereign and competitive European infrastructure.
The future European marketplace offers a single platform enabling European businesses and organizations to access a wide range of Cloud services, such as storage, computing, data analysis and resource management. By facilitating collaboration between the various Cloud players in Europe, the DOME project promotes a more robust and secure European Cloud ecosystem, and therefore innovation and creation of jobs in the field of digital technologies.
In the video above, you’ll find three main “facets or components” of this future marketplace.
The first is its distributed nature. It is a federative marketplace, where services will be not only available on the marketplace, but also on other marketplaces connected or federated to DOME, such as OUTSCALE Marketplace.
The marketplace will also have mediation and transaction functions that go beyond a simple catalog of services.
Then, the marketplace is not only a curated catalogue of services like it is very often the case with national Cloud marketplaces, but also has functionalities such as brokerage and transaction.
The final point is the curation of services. “We need to ensure that the services available on DOME comply with the highest standards in terms of security, data protection and energy efficiency. For this reason, an automated and continuous compliance verification mechanism will be implemented on Dome,” shares Tomas Petru.
“OUTSCALE is very well positioned to contribute, as a partner, as a consortium member to a successful delivery of DOME. And for that reason, we at the European Commission are also very happy to have OUTSCALE on board.”
